EmployBridge

EmployBridge (EB) is the biggest industrial staffing firm in the US, with a workforce of 400,000+ associates.

Since EB needs a pool of qualified workers they can place across a breadth of industries, EB never stops recruiting and vets candidates through a rigorous screening process involving skills testing, interviews and background checks.  

Agents at 3 centralized call centers help 400+ EB branches across the country recruit, screen and book job interviews. 

When EB approached us, branch and call center staff collaborated using Microsoft CRM, OneNote and third-party platforms. This disjointed workstream put company data at risk and resulted in duplicative efforts and mix-ups.

Call center agents and branch staff needed a tool to manage the interview-scheduling process.

UX Research & Design Lead—Extensive field research to deeply understand current-state scheduling procedures and users’ daily routines in order to propose and design a new, integrated workstream that helps EB screen 50k+ weekly applicants and book interviews with qualified candidates.

Our first step was to become deeply familiar with the existing workstreams, from top-to-bottom. How do branches and call center staff currently work together to coordinate recruiting, screening and interview booking? How well is the job getting done?  

User Interviews & Contextual Inquiry
Conducted 20 in-depth interviews and shadow sessions with users from the call center and branches. Directly observed scheduling procedures, having users explain the process in real time. Listened in on live scheduling and screening calls via phone splitter. 

Analytics Audit
Analyzed data to define a baseline and gauge volume/frequency of booked interviews captured in CRM, cross-checking against survey/interview findings. Found major gaps between scheduling stats posted in Google Sheets compared to data entered in CRM.

Survey
Since branches have varying interview prerequisites and processes, I devised and disseminated a branch survey to identify shared priorities and concerns.

Understanding the current state

         

Branches post their schedule of time slots in a Google Sheet for call center agents to populate with booked interviews.

Each branch has a slightly different spreadsheet format.

One inadvertent click or keystroke can erase an entire month of bookings.

Mapping the current state

         

Once we deeply understood how scheduling was currently being handled, we documented the workstreams in journey maps.

Issues with the current state

         

• No way to collect and track scheduling metrics (e.g., # of interviews booked, cancellations)
  
  
• Follow-up communications dispatched manually (e.g., confirmation emails, reminder texts)
  
  
• Manually account for timezone conversions
  
  
• No standard process in place to collect branch’s calendar of availability for interviews, open positions or scheduling prerequisites
  
  
• Scheduling prerequisites vary from branch to branch (e.g. Spanish interviews, group interviews, interview locations)
  
  
• Last-minute changes to schedule happen when big job orders come in. When branches have high demand for new applicants, branch staff will book interviews (going rouge). This results in call centers and branches concurrently scheduling interviews using clashing channels/processes.

Devising a new workstream 

         

I led affinity mapping sessions where we studied the existing workstreams to identify where branch and call center priorities overlap and deviate. This helped us identify which features we should incorporate into a new, integrated workstream. Based on (conflicting) stakeholder and user priorities, there were several variables we considered, but ruled out for MVP, such as language-based interviews (all default to English) and interview locations (all default to branch).

Key Features/Objectives Included in MVP: 

• Support configuration and management of 500+ unique branch schedules
  
  
• Branches need ability to cancel/add time slots on the fly
  
  
• Eliminate Google Sheets from scheduling process, centralizing all data capture In Microsoft CRM
  
  
• Lay groundwork for candidate self-scheduling in future releases

MVP workstream  

         

Integrates call center and branch procedures into one, streamlined process

MVP design  

I translated the MVP workstream into wireframes depicting key flows. 

Design considerations focused on efficiency and memorability. I wanted to make it easy for users to return to the tool after long periods without using it. 

Results

•  ~8,000 interviews booked and logged in CRM each week 
  
  
• Eliminated manual communication loop between branches and call center staff regarding cancellations and rescheduled interviews 
  
  
• Historical applicant details automatically captured and easily accessed in CRM (e.g., Have they been no-shows to previous interviews? Who did they speak with last time?) 
  
  
• EB stakeholders can accurately track scheduling metrics since input, storage, retrieval and revision of scheduling data lives in CRM (one source of truth)
  
  
• Built scalable and configurable infrastructure for future growth (self-scheduling and outcome reporting)